Kendrick Lamar’s Album ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ Is Being Taught In The Classroom

Kendrick said ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ would “be taught in college courses someday” and it already is

Kendrick has described To Pimp A Butterfly as “honest, fearful and unapologetic.”

In his Rolling Stonecover story, Kendrick is not specific about the meaning of his album title but does say “that will be taught in college courses someday.”

Someday came a lot sooner than he may have thought. Just weeks after the release of To Pimp A Butterfly, I came across a post titled ‘Why I Dropped Everything And Started Teaching Kendrick Lamar’s New Album.’

The author, Brian Mooney, was teaching a unit on Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye. Later he would use Kendrick’s songs Institutionalized, Complexion (A Zulu Love), King Kunta and u as teaching points in the class’s “Anti-Oppression” study, which explored institutional and internalised racism.

Brian Mooney is an educator, scholar, and poet from New Jersey, who says Kendrick “offers a new brand of hope for the hip hop generation” – highlighting the “pain and anger” in Lamar’s voice on The Blacker The Berry and the positivity and potential uplifting effects of the songs i and Complexion (A Zulu Love).

Read the full article and then read the powerful analyses his 9th grade students made of Kendrick Lamar’s album, by clicking the links below.